PARISH OF GANTOX. 



159 



cutting edg-e, which is rounded and widens gradually from the 

 middle of the weapon. The hole for the handle is l^in. in width, 

 and narrows very slightly to the centre, having been drilled from 

 both sides. In the barrow was a square-shaped flint scraper. 



I am inclined to think, as has been already stated in the Intro- 

 duction, that this kind of axe-hammer was meant for the purposes 

 of war. Having their edges rounded they could not have been 

 adapted for cutting wood, or indeed for any except an offensive use. 



Fig. 100. |. 



and there is certainly nothing in the fact that they are found 

 associated with interments inconsistent with the presumption that 

 they have been weapons of war. For in days when every man 

 was armed, and when individual prowess was of more importance 

 than at a time when the change in the character of those arms and 

 the consequent alteration in military tactics have merged the 

 individual in the mass, what more natural than that, when the 



bones, was a pierced axe of gi-eenstone. ' This is the fii-st of its kind that has as yet 

 been found in the tumuli of Dorset.' Warne, Celtic Tumuli of Dorset, p. 56, engr. 

 p. 63. One was discovered with a bronze knife in an m-n containing burnt bones, under 

 a barrow at Winwick, Lancashii-e. Journ. of Arch. Inst., vol. xviii. p. 158. In a bar- 

 row near Throwley, amongst a deposit of burnt bones in an urn were two bone pins, 

 a bronze awl, and a ' double-edged axe of basaltic stone,' which had been burnt with 

 the body. Bateman, Ten Years' Diggings, p. 155. A very fine one was found with 

 a deposit of burnt bones ^Nnthin a stone circle at Crithie, Aberdeenshire. Proc. Soc. 

 of Ant. Scotland, vol. ii. p. 306. 



